


The desire sinking deep into the cavities in his bones

by lesyeuxverts



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Gen, James stuck in his own head, Unrequited Love, dreaming spires, musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 18:05:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3778405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesyeuxverts/pseuds/lesyeuxverts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James has come here, to London, to lose himself in the crowds and champagne. He has come to find himself, to discover who he is without Lewis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The desire sinking deep into the cavities in his bones

It was a mistake – is a mistake – and James knows it. He knows it like the longing that shudders through his body and echoes in his bones.  
  
He has come here, to London, to lose himself in the crowds and champagne. He has come to find himself, to discover who he is without Lewis.

He rides the Circle line, cycling endlessly through the knotted lines under London, changing only when he comes to the end of the loop. When they pass through tunnels, he watches his reflection in the dark window – he is pale, too pale, Lewis would say. There is a crimson mark on his cheek – a stranger's kiss at the stroke of midnight.

If it is an omen, James isn't sure he wants it.

He watches the people on the train. A woman, sleeping - with her hair in soft brown waves and her perfect pale skin, she could've modelled for a Madonna. Two women, speaking in quick, accented French – did you know he had another lover, did you know he wanted to leave me? I knew nothing, the second woman says.  
  
James feels as though he, too, knows nothing. He has been stripped of knowledge and abandoned, empty. He feels like something as fragile as butterfly wings, as delicate as the dreaming spires of the city.

He has walked the empty, early-abandoned streets of the town, through the silence that has soaked up the space left behind after revelry and frivolity. He walked past a pair of champagne flutes on the steps of a pub, half-filled now with clear rainwater – past other debris, other remnants of stories.

A single kiss can change the course of a fairy tale or the shape of a life. A single wish – but it is not that simple, James knows. He has never seen Lewis look at him that way, never noticed a single short glance out of the ordinary. He doesn't, at the end of the day, know what Lewis might wish for.

James's life is in orbit around the man – apogee, perigee, again and again in endless cycles, drawing nearer and becoming bound more tightly with each revolution – but there are days like this, times when he's caught in himself and can't see beyond the boundaries of his own self. (He does not think, in all of his thinking, that he might be the thing Lewis wishes for at the end of each day.)

James, like another Lewis's Alice, finds it hard to believe impossible things – but he has wanted impossible things, wanted them enough that his teeth ached, as though he'd eaten too much sugar, the desire sinking deep into the cavities of his bones. He cannot stop himself from wanting impossible things, but he thinks that somehow, they do him a soul-deep and irreparable harm. Temptation, and temptation, and the hot and lonely desert, eating only locusts and honey– Jesus resisted, but James knows that he is not that strong.

He doesn't want to see the look that he would surely see on Lewis's face, if James were to reach out for him and ask for more.

He will go back to Oxford, walk the familiar streets, sit at well-known and familiar pubs, drive the distraction from his bones with work. He will not believe impossible things, will not want them – he will avoid the desert and the temptation, and live in the here and now.

His thoughts go in circles, spinning around and around themselves with centripetal force. He will return – he cannot return – he hopes – he dares not hope. It was a mistake to fall in love, James knows that now.

He will return, but he will not long for the impossible. He will love, but he will keep that love to himself, a single tightly-furled blossom in the garden of self-knowledge – tended, but not permitted to flourish.

Oxford will be the place he has come to love, and the streets will be alive with the press and pass of tourists and students alike, vibrating with their voices and their footsteps. It will be the city that James has known and loved, but the dreaming spires will bear his dreams no longer. He never meant to dream.

  



End file.
